


Under the Skin

by MalihiniMoon



Category: The Mirrored World
Genre: F/F, F/M, First Time, Genderqueer, Other, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:09:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalihiniMoon/pseuds/MalihiniMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dasha and Xenia grew up together, closer than sisters. As the time of their court debut nears, their lives appear to be on the brink of change, as the must soon submit to their chosen husbands. </p><p>But some changes you can't predict.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Skin

**Author's Note:**

> These short fics are based on Debra Dean's historical novel, "The Mirrored World," set in 18th century St. Petersburg. As I read her novel, I felt robbed that the most interesting characters and most interesting challenging relationships were not ever fully realized-- never fully fleshed out. 
> 
> So naturally, that turned into explicit fanfic smut. 
> 
> Enjoy!

I never had a sister, but Xenia was a constant-- a bright star on my every horizon. The force of her wild gaze pulled me through my days-- pulling me in and out of the Nana's smokey kitchen, dense cheese and black bread folded into cloths and tucked into our greasy aprons, yanking me out of the heavy wooden side door, across the meadow, to the river. Or whisking me out of the parlor, through the tiled front hall, with the refracted light bulbous in the round glassed door panels, and into the street, noisy with village bustle and St. Petersburg life. In the dark, in the big canopied bed we shared, she whispered mad stories to me-- narrated her dreams until we were both dreaming them, together in worlds of her imagining. Always Dasha following Xenia, Xenia leading Dasha, in and out and over the wide world all around.

When we were older, 10 and 12, we no longer slept in the same bed as we now each had our own rooms, but often I would go to her, crawl under the heavy bearskin with her. She would stir and press up near me, allow me to wedge my icy feet between her thighs. We woke up a tangle-- her whispy white hair defying all laws of gravity and floating around her face like a nimbus, her white skin flushed pink with the warmth of the bear fur. We poked and snuggled and she would narrate the household noises-- ah, Nana has made tea for your Papa! Oh dear, she has forgotten the sugar and she will get scolded by your Mama. And Hssss-- my sister is up and she is pinching her cheeks in the mirror, so she can catch a nice fat husband with them!

Xenia's sister Nadya, three years older than me, had perfected the reptilian coolness of noble femininity by the age of 17. The year her mama and mine decided Nadya was ready to make her debut in court, Xenia and I were readied to debut with her, as tagalongs. We spent hours at our needlework, laying by linens and napkins for our married lives, and at manners and dancing. The days were full of prayers and minuets and imported French affectations that fell with difficulty from our Russian tongues.

Suddenly our days at the river seemed like the dreams of a child, and the easy companionship and freedom we shared gave way to the pressing duties our new lives held for us-- demure attendance and obedience to our husbands, and the production of male heirs. Xenia's mother hung an icon of St Irene Chrysovalantou over Nadya's bed. Xenia pulled me, secretly, into Nadya's room (she was at her tailor's-- we never would have dared if she had been at home) and pointed at the rigidly staring pious saint. She twittered that it was for Nadya to be bedded and conceive a child. I could not imagine what the connection could be between Nadya, her bed, the saint, and her unknown future husband.

Xenia belly laughed when I whispered my confusion.

"Where will Nadya get a child?" She said, "It's simple. A man will rake her open with his rake, and plant the seeds of a child inside of her. Then it will grow like a flower, until it comes-- pop! out of her navel!" She pushed me onto Nadya's ornate bed, tickled my stomach until I couldn't breathe, and we both lay there overcome with the insanity of the image-- Nadya, a little garden on her swollen belly, some fat nobleman with a little rake. St. Irene stared on evenly above our heads, her halo lit gold around her demure oval face.

As Nadya's prospects in court grew, so did her cruelty. As a young girl, she had teased and pinched us, but now her cruelties were icier and more devastating even as Nadya looked more and more like a Lady. Nadya reserved her cruelty for Xenia especially, and for those oddities that made Xenia most herself.

One evening, as I was readying to sleep, I heard Xenia crying in her room. I quietly made my way to her chambers. In the dim moonlit room, I could see the dark shape of her narrow shoulders, long back and pale head-- as she crouched on the floor. Across the space was a spray of destruction-- birds' bones, snails' shells, a pretty rat's skull, interestingly knotted twigs and dried leaves-- stomped and crushed into the rugs. It was Xenia's most treasrured childhood collection-- those last treasures endowed with the fading divinity of childhood magic-- the mementos of the sunlit river days, before we were about to be presented at court, when we were just wild children in the kitchens and woods.

As my eyes resolved the jumble of shadows, I saw that Xenia was kneeling on the debris, her knees and hands bloody, and her was mouth swollen and bruised.

She didn't need to tell me-- I knew it was Nadya.

Nadya who could, without getting hot in the face, strike her sister, and push her onto the shards of her smashed treasures, and still look like a lovely poised Countess as she did it.

That was what terrified me about her. Nadya's aloof beauty seemed to sanctify all of her behavior-- as if someone so perfectly lovely couldn't possibly do anything truly evil. There must be some reason for it, some justification, for this angel's retribution. Even as I watched her petty cruelty, I felt powerless to stop it while I was in her presense. 

But when she was gone, the spell broke, and I was left to see the destruction for what it was-- vindictive, senseless, ugly.

That night, I pulled Xenia up from the floor. I picked the tiny pieces of bone and shell out of her hands. I pulled her dress from her shoulders and helped her raise her arms into her nightgown. She was calm now, her mouth open and still blushed with blood. She looked younger out of her womanly clothes-- smaller in the shapeless nightgown. Her breasts hung free of the restrictive binding, and I noticed their fullness above her soft belly and rounding hips. I noticed myself staring and looked away quickly, strangely hot in the face.

I shed my clothes as well, draped them over the ottoman by the window, and pulled Xenia's extra dressing gown over my body, feeling strangely shy. We were both women now, 15 and 16, with our blood in unison every month.

She lay down in her bed and made room for me. I climbed in with her, and pulled the familiar bearskin up over us. But it did not seem that we were children any more, whispering dreams to each other. The air seemed charged.

"She is awful," I said. Perhaps the tension could be dissolved by exorcising the presense of the cruel elder sister.

"I don't care about her," said Xenia. She sounded tired. "She is cruel and stupid and she will marry a fat old man and be miserable. Let her hit me while she can."

"What about your fat old man? Won't he come charging in and save you?"

Xenia ignored that. "Will you stay with me tonight?" 

Xenia was shivering. I curled my body around hers.

"Of course I'll stay."

She pressed her back into me, and I could feel her ragged breathing shuddering her ribcage. I shushed her, making nonsensical sounds, and rubbing her shoulder and arm. I trailed my fingers up and down her arm, then along her ribs, to her waist. I rubbed, soothing her with a firm touch, as I had seen her do with spitting cats and wild-eyed dogs. I pressed my hand along her body, trying to press out the sadness and the loss.

She sighed deeply, and caught my hand at her waist. She twined her fingers into mine.

"Oh Dasha," she breathed. She rolled over on to her back, and pulled my hand to her face, our fingers still interlaced.

"You are better to me than a sister every could be."

I rested my forehead on hers, and let my thumb trail to the broken skin of her lip. I traced the soft heat of her lips with my thumb and felt her mouth moving under my ministrations.

"I think even an angry donkey would be better to you than your devil of a sister."

She released my fingers, with a sound like a chuckle, and put her palm to my face. I could only see the glint of her eyes in the dark, the damp tracks of her tears on her cheeks.

I liked the solid feeling of our foreheads together, and the warmth between our faces, and the heat of shared breath.

She moved her head slightly, tilted her jaw up, and kissed me, softly, on the corner of my mouth. Then again. Her hand went from my jaw to the back of my neck, under my braid, and rubbed there, sending a spray of goosebumps down my back and arms.

I moved my face close to hers, and rubbed my cheekbone against the bruise of her chin. I kissed the broken skin of her lip, lingering on the cut. I kissed her lips-- they were warm and impossibly soft. I pulled away and tasted the metal salt of blood.

Something like pain settled low in my gut.

  
"Oh Xenia," I breathed and kissed her again, hungrily, as though I could lick the pain out of her, devour the sadness away from her.

She arched up under me, holding my face close, and her breathing became loud as I plundered her mouth clumsily with my tongue. She kissed me back, the sweet taste of her mouth filling mine, making me groan. She giggled and shushed me.

"Is this mad? Are we insane?" I asked her, my lips against her cheek.  
"Certainly," she whispered, and she licked up into my ear-- I wanted to rub my ear against her mouth like a cat. I licked across her neck and smiled as she groaned and tossed her head back for me. I kissed and licked and lapped at her throat, my hands on her shoulders, kneading her arms. I found the hollow of her throat-- the ivory divot between her collar bones, and licked at that as she gasped. My hands were on her ribs, and they seemed to be leaping beneath me with each heavy breath.

She grabbed my hands suddenly and bunched them against her breasts. We both groaned and I dropped my forehead to her sternum. I moved the thin material of the dressing gown over her body, and pulled the soft pillow of her breast toward my mouth with one hand, and rumpled the other mound of fleshcwith my palm. They rolled heavily beneath my palms; I felt intoxicated.

"You...so beautiful...I want to..." I breathed.  
"Show me." She gasped.  
I mouthed at her left breast through the fabric, making a cool wet spot over her small pink nipple. It tautened under my mouth, and I rolled her breast under my palm again. I ministered to the other breast, lapping at its heaviness with my tongue, until the right nipple too seemed to be straining through the damp fabric. I felt the lovely symmetry with both of my hands-- those beautifully heavy breasts, with the erect tight nipples tenting the fabric. I teased them again, sucking the fabric and the breast tight into my mouth, flicking the nub with my tongue.  
And the other breast-- until both nipples seemed impossibly elongated, impossibly hard.  
"Oh, I'm aching." She ran her hands over her own breasts. The sight, in the dimness, was nearly enough to make my eyes roll back into my head. My mind felt empty-- I only felt desperate to be near her, to cover her, to lap her up and make her forget herself.  
I pulled her gown up, and pushed my hands over her soft belly. I planted loud kissed on her waist, on her navel. She laughed and poked my ribs. I smiled up her ribs, peppering kisses across the leaping skin. Xenia's breath was ragged and her stomach was sheened with sweat. I blew cool air across her taught nipples, and she put her arm across her mouth to muffle her cry.

I dove down hungrily onto her breast, humming, taking in as much of her into my mouth as I could. She thrashed beneath me, nearly shouting into the arm across her mouth, and her other hand scrabbling at my fingers over her other breast.  
"Oh my dear heart... my true friend..." I kissed the heavy curve of her breast where the skin was damp, and kissed in the hollow between, and the pushed my fingers into the soft fat of her other breast. I dove down greedily and lapped and sucked at her body, as if I could pull her into myself, as if I could get her out of herself. She writhed under me, arching her body harder into my mouth. Then she grabbed my hand, and shoved it between her thighs.

Her body bucked, her face contorted into a grimace-- her eyes were screwed shut and her wrist was across her forehead as if she were going to faint, but she turned and worked my hand furiously between her legs, the knuckle of my thumb rubbing hard against her pubic bone. I shifted further down the bed, the bearskin dropping off of the bed completely, absorbed by the way she was so lost-- just with me, my hard thumb, my steadying hand on her waist.

"I've got you," I said, "I've got you." I repeated it over and over. She worked my hand hard onto her body. I could feel the unbelievable heat between her legs, and curled one finger up into the hollow.  
She yelped, and then drove herself down upon my finger.  
I felt a throb of heat between my own legs, and reached my hand down to my own body. I was as wet as she was, practically dripping.  
I exhaled a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh.  
"This is madness."  
"It certainly is. And don't you dare stop."  
"Never. Never ever," and I pushed two fingers up inside of her. She groaned and wriggled down on my hand, her own hands working furiously at her front.  
I moved my fingers inside of her-- the heat seemed impossible-- and she thrust herself against my fingers and rubbed herself. I groped her breast hard and she seemed to shatter, her body wracked with hard spasms around my fingers, her stomach and shoulders convulsing again and again, and then she was giggling.

She snickered and sighed and flopped back onto the bed.

"You. My Dasha. By the saints, come here." She pulled me up on top of her and squirmed beneath me.  
"Give me this." She pulled my hand wetly from between her legs and examined my fingers wryly. They smelled strongly of her womanhood-- a living smell.  
She stared up into my eyes and then suddenly sucked my fingers hard into her mouth. I gasped. Her tongue rolled along my fingers, and echoed the heat and wet I'd just felt below. She licked and pulled wetly at my fingertips, savoring every drop of flavor left on them. She released them with a pop.  
"What do you want?" I could see the moonlight on her teeth, on her eyes.  
"I-- you. I want you." I rested my forehead against hers again.  
"You have me." Her answer was a breath against my mouth, and then she was kissing me hard.  
"You have me," she said again, rolling me onto my back. She was taller than me, and now I felt her strength.  
She lifted my nightgown and ran her hands down my body, from my collarbone, raking across my breasts, and then grabbing the flesh of my behind with two strong hands.  
"You have me," she said and moved herself between my legs. My knees were shaking. She soothed me like a skittish animal, pressing flat hands down my thighs, down my calves, over my navel, under my bottom.  
"You have me," she said and kissed me, between my legs.

The shock of it racked me, and I arched up into her.  
"Holy mother of--" I clamped the back of my right hand hard across my mouth, and wound my left hand into her loose and sweat-damp hair.  
I couldn't help myself, I rocked hard into her mouth, into her moving tongue.

I'd never have imagined myself keening for this, but my mind was white hot and empty of everything but this sensation, and I surrendered to it. I prayed, "let this last forever, let this last forever."

Xenia laughed. I must have been praying outloud.  
She worked at me with her tongue, each touch ringing me like a bell, from toes to head. Then she put one long bony finger inside of me and I had to bite down on my hand to muffle my scream.  
"Easy my dear, easy, hush," she soothed me. She moved her finger in me. It stung-- and I wanted more of it.  I ground myself down onto her hand, and she went back to her determined lap-lap-lapping as her finger twisted inside of me as well.

The sensations were so strong, I almost felt lost. Then she added another finger and I was found.

"Xe-- Xenia!" I cried out and my body clenched around her-- shocked again and again by intense waves like bursts of light and color all around me.

I don't know how but a moment later she was next to me, soothing my hot face with pungent kisses. My body gave another urgent clench at the smell of my own sex upon her mouth. I kissed at her hungrily, lapping up the mingled savor of myself and herself. We hummed into each others' mouths, and curled together thus-- naked, joined, loose-limbed and cooling.

As I felt into a dreamless abyss I heard her voice, low and languid, as if she were taking me into her dream again, like we were children.

"Now, Dashenka, you are my heart, and I am yours. We are one flesh, forever."


End file.
